Tuesday 14 June 2016

An Overdue Update

I'm finally back to blogging!!

It's been 8 months since my last post and a year since I finished uni. I've found that leaving uni left me unmotivated. I thought I could finally take a well-deserved break which turned into avoiding going back to personal projects. Before I knew it I felt I couldn't draw at all. 

Friends convinced me to try Inktober and that helped a lot. I regained some confidence and learned to love drawing with inks. I had a project which kept my mind focused and I felt I had something to do every day.

It was after Inktober that I hit the worst art block I've ever experienced. I don't know why it took so long to get out of it or even why it was caused, but I finally found my way back to my roots. Paint. Good old fashioned messy paint that always finds its way onto my socks and ruins them. I haven't been this happy in months. 


I was rewatching Jessica Jones while taking a week off work and realised how much I loved the style of the show. The painterly style of the opening credits was pretty much screaming at me to paint. A work friend had also been talking about how much fun he'd been having drawing on cardboard at the time. I had some cardboard lying around and this finally happened. I didn't realise how much I missed messy blending.

Since then I've been doodling whenever I can, usually in work. I like doing a small drawing on bills, it makes people smile and even if it's a really bad drawing, I feel I've achieved something.

SO. Today I was mindlessly scrolling through the internet and discovered a Palette Challenge and it seemed like fun. I've always had difficulty selecting colours for works, so having ready-made palettes would force me to use certain shades I wouldn't normally use. Hopefully I'll do more of these, it was surprisingly fun!


(Please excuse the next sappy-feelings paragraph)

The years in school and uni forced me to be motivated. They made drawing into a chore. I even started to think of drawing as a punishment, it was something I avoided. But I feel differently now. I've enjoyed getting back into art. I've realised how I'm always surrounded by inspirational people who give me the ideas and motivation I need to create art. Thank you, friends! 

I'm determined to keep this up!